Twenty-Fifth Anniversary of the Death of Joseph Dietzgen

Published:PravdaNo. 102, May 5, 1913.

      Signed:V. Ilyin.

      Published according to thePravdatext.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1977,

      Moscow,Volume 19,

      pages79-82.Translated:The Late George HannaTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      (2004).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

JosephDietzgen, a tannery worker and one of the most
eminent German Social-Democratic philosophical writers, died twenty-five
years ago, in 1888.

JosephDietzgen was the author of a number of works (most of them
translated into Russian) that includeThe Nature of the Workings of the
Human Mind(published in 1869),A Socialist’s Excursions into the
Theory of Knowledge, Acquisition of Philosophy, etc. It was Karl Marx,
in a letter to Kugelmann on December 5, 1868, who made the best appraisal
of Dietzgen and his place in the history of philosophy and of the
working-class movement:

“Afairly long time ago he sent me a fragment of a manuscript on the
‘faculty of thought’ which, in spite of a certain confusion and of too
frequent repetition, contains much that is excellent and—as the
independent product of a working man—admirable.”

Suchis the importance of Dietzgen—a worker who arrived at
dialectical materialism, i.e., Marx’s philosophy, in dependently. In
forming an assessment of the worker Dietzgen it is of great value to
remember that he never considered himself the founder of a school.

Dietzgenspoke of Marx as theleader of a trendas early as
1873, when few people understood Marx. Dietzgen emphasised that Marx and
Engels “possessed the necessary philosophical training”. And in 1886, a
long time after the publication of Engels’sAnti-D\"uhring, one of
the chief Marxist philosophical works, Dietzgen wrote of Marx and Engels as
the “recognised founders” of a trend.

Thismust be borne in mind when judging the many sup porters of
bourgeois philosophy, i.e., idealism and agnosticism (including Machism),
who attempt to take advantage of “a certain confusion” in
Dietzgen’s writing. Dietzgen himself would have ridiculed such admirers and
would have repulsed them.

Tobecome politically conscious, workers should read Dietzgen but
shouldneverfor a momentforgetthat hedoes not
always give a truepicture of the doctrine of Marx and Engels, who are
the only writers from whom philosophy canbe learned.

Dietzgenwrote at a time when simplified, vulgarisedmaterialismwas most widespread. Dietzgen, therefore, laid his
greatest stress on the historical changes that had taken place in
materialism, on thedialecticalcharacter of materialism, that is,
on the need to support the point of view of development, to understand that
all human knowledge is relative, to understand the multilateral connections
between, and interdependence of, all phenomena in the universe, and to
develop the materialism of natural history to a materialist conception of
history.

Becausehe lays so much stress on the relativity of human knowledge,
Dietzgen often becomes confused and makes incorrect concessions to idealism
and agnosticism. Idealism in philosophy is a defence, sometimes extremely
elaborate, sometimes less so, of clericalism, of a doctrine that places
faith above science, or side by side with science, or in some way or
another gives faith a place. Agnosticism (from the Greek words “a”noand “gnosis”knowledge) is vacillation between
materialism and idealism, i.e., in practice it is vacillation between
materialist science and clericalism. Among the agnostics are the followers
of Kant (the Kantians), Hume (the positivists, realists and others) and the
present-day Machists. This is why some of the most reactionary bourgeois
philosophers, the most thorough-placed obscurantists and direct defenders
of clericalism, try to “use” Dietzgen’s mistakes.

Byand large, however, Dietzgen was a materialist. He was an enemy of
clericalism and agnosticism. “The only thing we have in common with
earlier materialists,” wrote Dietzgen, “is that we accept matter as the
prerequisite to,or foundation of, the idea.” That “only thing” is precisely theessenceof philosophical materialism.

“Thematerialist theory of knowledge,” wrote Dietzgen, “may be
reduced to a recognition of the fact that the human organ of knowledge does
not irradiate any metaphysical light but is a bit of nature that reflects
other bits of nature.” That is the materialist theory of thereflectionin human knowledge of eternally moving and changing
matter, a theory that evokes hatred and horror, calumny and distortion on
the part of all official, professorial philosophy. And how Dietzgen berated
and branded the “certificated lackeys of clericalism”, the idealist
professors, the realists and others—how he lambasted them with the deep
passion of a true revolutionary!  “Of all parties,” Dietzgen rightly
said, speaking of the philosophical “parties”, i.e., materialism and
idealism, “the vilest is the party of the centre”.

Tothis “vile party” belong theLucheditorial board and
Mr. S. Semkovsky (LuchNo. 92). The editors made a tiny
reservation. “We do not share the general philosophical point of view”,
they say, but the exposition of Dietzgen’s views is “correct and clear”.

Thatis an appalling untruth. Mr. Semkovsky unconscionably misquoted
and distorted Dietzgen, seizing upon the “confusion” and
ignoringMarx’s appraisal of Dietzgen. Incidentally, both
Plekhanov, a socialist who possesses the greatest knowledge of the
philosophy of Marxism, and the best Marxists of Europehave recognised
that appraisal in full.

Mr.Semkovskydistorts both philosophical materialism and Dietzgen,
talking nonsense on the question of “one or two worlds” (this,
supposedly, is the “key question”! Learn a little, my friend, at least
read Engels’sLudwig Feuerbach) and on the question of the
universe and phenomena (Dietzgen is supposed to have reduced the real world
to nothing but phenomena; this is clerical and professorial slander of
Dietzgen).

Itis impossible to list all Mr. Semkovsky’s distortions. Let workers
interested in Marxism know that theLucheditors area union
of liquidatorsof Marxism. Some want to liquidate the underground,
i.e., the Party of the proletariat (Mayevsky, Sedov, F. D., etc.), others,
the idea of thehegemony of the proletariat (Potresov, Koltsov, etc.), the third, the
philosophical materialism of Marx (Mr. Semkovsky & Co.), the fourth,
the internationalism of proletarian socialism (the Bund members Kosovsky,
Medem and other supporters of “cultural-national autonomy”), the fifth,
the economic theory of Marx (Mr. Maslov with his theory of rent and the
“new” sociology) and so on and so forth.

Thisblatant distortion of Marxism by Mr. Semkovsky and the editors who
defend him is only one of the more obvious examples of the “activities”
of this literary “union of liquidators”.